Stakeout
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Summary: A late night, cops in cars: too much coffee, too much time. Some language.


**_Standard Disclaimer: _**_The characters and universe of Law & Order are the property of Dick Wolf and NBC. I only borrow them for my personal ... whatever. Entertainment, I guess.  
_

**_Author's Note: _**_Constructive criticism and feedback always welcome. The next step is to pick up the rest of the evening in Eames and Goren's car._

* * *

The temperature outside has plunged to brutal lows, that breath-stealing chill that precedes snowfall. It is only marginally better inside the car, though they at least have shelter from the wind that periodically pokes its way through suburbia. Her breath paints pictures in the air before dissipating, its heat leeched out almost before it has a chance to leave her mouth.

She's not sure she can feel her feet. She's not sure she wants to. There are other places that have gone numb in the past few hours, but it is her feet that are bothering her. And her hands.

Also, her eyelids may have frozen to her eyeballs. In the grand scheme of things, this almost seems irrelevant.

"It's got to be past 2:00," her partner says, out of the middle of a sham nap. His eyelids are heavy, but his eyes are slivers of light between them. Though he may not have been asleep, his voice makes a case for its need, low and dark and dragged over rough terrain.

She does not move to check her watch. He is more interested in being contrary than being proved right or wrong, and does not check either. His fingers drum against the steering wheel.

"At _least_," he says. And then adds, "This guy's starting to frost my cookies."

The lights in their target's house are still on, still cheerful, suggesting a warmth and homeyness that is entirely absent in their car. Silhouettes move against the windows; the flicker of a television throws shadows against a wall. "Mm," she says, more as an experiment in sound than as assent. "He's up late for a school night."

"1,200 public schools in the five boroughs and we get the schoolteacher who likes the late, late show."

"He keeps cop hours," she suggests.

Mike snorts. "Not mine."

"You're an early to bed, early to rise kind of guy?"

"Depends on what I'm going to bed with," her partner says, and his grin flashes whitely through the gloom, unabashedly male. "And what I'm waking up to."

She is promptly haunted by this, because now there are images where peace of mind used to be. Her imagination is a little stunned by the cold, and is hopelessly confused by the order of, _Don't. Stop._ Periods sound very similar to dramatic enunciations to a mind laboring without caffeine.

Mike watches her peering into the empty belly of her cup, then uncurls to stretch off the vinyl seat and rummage in the back. His thermos is metal, thick and dented; like its owner, it has lived hard, and shows the scars. He gestures with it towards her cup and she surrenders it gratefully, taking advantage of the moment to exhale into the basket of her hands. Her sudden yawn surprises her.

"If you need to sleep," he begins through a mouthful of leather glove.

"Coffee will be fine," she says, and watches him strip a hand bare to wrestle with the thermos cap.

"We can trade off later."

"Coffee," she repeats, and adds as a careful afterthought, "We could talk about something."

"You want to talk." It is a question, phrased as a statement. He glances askance.

"Conversation. It happens from time to time between civilized people. It would help keep us awake."

There's a moment's silence. Then he asks, "You planning on wearing that hat all night?"

"Yes."

"We can talk about how that hat makes you look like a sherpa."

She says nothing in reply, allowing her brief look to convey all that is necessary of tired tolerance. His amusement does not reach his mouth, but it does not need to; they have learned enough of each other over the intervening months to read each other's moods, if not always the reasons for them.

In the end, he concedes. Though they skirt the private and intensely personal, he is still more talkative than she is, both by inclination and by choice. "That club," he says, while the smell of hot coffee floods the car. "Shock and Awe. When you said you knew the DJ."

There is a question embedded in the apparent non sequitur, though his voice does not cast it as one. It takes her a second to trace memory back from the present to the past, their current case to the Garrett's. Authority figures exploiting their power. Children desperate to masquerade as adults. "I arrested his father ten years ago on a domestic violence call," she says, answering the intent if not the words. "We ended up tying him to a murder in the Bronx. He's still in prison."

"And you keep track of the kid?" he asks, handing her coffee back to her. Even through the knitted gloves, the heat scalds her skin. She revels in it, clinging to that too-ephemeral warmth.

She shrugs, encompassing in a single gesture a decade's history and the occasionally complicated relationship between a cop and the people whose lives she impacts. He has his own experiences to draw on, and from the way his brow lifts in consideration, they are not altogether dissimilar to hers.

"He's your CI," he realizes.

"He used to be." Years past, now. No longer an informant; barely confidential even when he was, though that lapse was more his doing than hers. "He stays out of trouble, nowadays."

"As a DJ for The Shock and Awe Club?"

"He's a good DJ," she says mildly. "He invites me to some of his shows."

"Nice guy."

"Mm."

His eyebrows lift at her, inquiring.

"He has an emotional attachment," she says by way of explanation. "He was at an impressionable age when we met."

"Barek, if you're telling me you did your collar's son--" Mike begins.

She pauses, considering possible replies. "He was eleven," she says at last, opting for dignity.

"You like them young."

"He had a difficult relationship with his father. He was grateful."

"And you got an informant."

"It was a mutually profitable relationship," she says, and promptly regrets it, though her partner does not take advantage of the opening beyond lifting a single, sardonic eyebrow. She is inclined at first to be suspicious of the restraint, and then can only be grateful for it. His willingness to mine the depths of gratuitous vulgarity is far greater than hers.

Down the street, a light turns off in the house window, reducing it to a blank, black pane in a row of like fellows. Beside her, Mike stiffens. Two more lights turn off in quick progression, and then it is only a matter of sitting and waiting while bodies disperse across the top floor into bathrooms and bedrooms, and then to sleep.

At the last light, she pushes back her sleeve to read her watch. It is an automatic check, duplicated with slightly more fuss by the man beside her. "1:18."

"Damn," he says, reading the same number on his. His forehead hits the steering wheel, eyes disappearing behind the flop of grizzled hair and the barrier of fists.

"He might not do anything tonight," she says.

"Twenty says he will," Mike counters. He lifts his head; a shadow nibbles at the corner of his mouth. "We spooked him. He's not leaving operations open where we can trace them back to him."

"Mm," she says, and lets quiet fall. She does not take the bet.

Silence has a thousand different shapes, and can say a thousand different things. They have the knack for it now: her by preference, him by design. She has not asked him if it is a thing he has learned by necessity, being her partner; they have both made compromises to meet halfway, though habit has ingrained some behaviors past mending. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. She moves her lips in a silent monologue. It is comfortable peace.

The distant wail of sirens penetrates the car. Mike glances at the radio, then subsides with what she recognizes as regret. Even at his most restful, there is always that suggestion that he would rather be moving.

"So how do you know so much about Sinatra?" she asks, since the subject is fresh on her mind. She offers him a bag of celery.

He shrugs and takes a stick. She has trained him in that, too. "The old man was a fan," he says, which, like the first flush of a bruise, only hints at the damage underneath. If it does not quite explain the avidity of the son's all-encompassing knowledge of the genre and the times, it opens enough for an intelligence to conjecture.

"You learned it from him. Like Judge Garrett and Ethan."

He does not bristle at the comparison, but then, he is an old dog. "Something like that," he says wryly. "Without the women. --Wouldn't've minded the women at 16," he adds, as though there could have been any doubt.

"He used to play in New York City," she recalls. "My father talked about seeing him live, once."

"The old man took me to see him in '61 when he played Carnegie." her partner volunteers, unexpectedly. There's a warmth in his voice that she has not heard all that often.

She regards him with interest. "You were young."

"Old enough."

"Just the two of you?"

He shrugs again, a touch of embarrassment to the offhand gesture. Perhaps it means yes. Perhaps no. "You would've thought it was the Second Coming at our house."

She decides it means yes. "I used to watch the movies with my father," she remembers, tracing a circuitous path through her father to his, and from him to his son.

"We used to catch them," he says. "Neighbors used to get reels. You want history, I still got some of his 8-tracks."

"He was a collector."

There's a small pause for that question. Some ghost shadows his face, then disappears. "Nah," he says. The small grin he directs out the window marks a private joke at his own expense. "Vinyl broke too easy." Like skin. Like bones. Like childhood. And just like that, the door to his past closes as though it was never open to begin with.

It is a curious thing, this fishing for a man's life through such moments, feeding a line through a crack to see what tidbits will return, treasure or pain. Mike is a master of playing the open book, exhibiting each thought, each word as though it is all that he is and can be. _I am what you see,_ he swears with each act. _Look no further._

As a defense, it is better than most. It comforts perps in interrogation, who sink into familiarity with a relief that they know how the game is played. Witnesses brush up against that rough exterior and miss those sharp eyes and sharper mind. He is used to being underestimated. He prefers it.

As a fence between partners, it is imperfect and fragile. The exchange of knowledge and understanding is sometimes a game, and sometimes in deadly earnest. His darkness fascinates her, as darkness has always fascinated her, wherever she has encountered it. In every perp, in every crime: in her partner, who protects her back and scalds her front. It is not the quantity, but the quality that varies. Mike hoards his secrets as carefully as she does, each snippet of understanding traded for in like coin.

Her coin is less bloody than his.

"Mine was a fan of Audrey Hepburn," she says after a moment, feeling her way.

"Chick flicks."

"I was almost named after her," she says.

"Audrey," he says, and snorts. "Can't see you as an Audrey."

It is meant to be kind. She shrugs and says nothing, prefering not to concede that she can't either.

The subject almost drops.

And then he says, thoughtfully, "Carolyn."

Her head turns, but he is not looking at her.

"Caro," he says. "Barek -- Barky? Bark."

She returns her attention to the house. It does nothing to rescue her.

"Care. Carrie," he says after a long, silent span of seconds. He sips his coffee. "Lyn?"

Her partner has an unfair advantage. "Mikey," she says, and then chooses the high road, lacking further inspiration.

Mike is unimpressed. "Lynnie," he counters. "Roro." He considers the wash of street light further down the block, and adds with sudden, smug triumph: "Roly."

She weighs her reply carefully, balancing the cost of her answer with the possible reward. "Roly-poly, actually," she says at last. She does not need to look to see his grin.

"Weight problem? You?"

"When I was younger." She does not look down at herself; does not check to make sure her stomach has not pouched, simply hearing itself referred to. Does not check to make sure the parka (warm) does not make her look fat. (It does.) It is an effort, but she manages it. "Baby fat, mostly."

"And now you eat rabbit food." It is more mockery than curiosity. She does not bother to take offense over it, from a man who considers mustard a food group.

"I like vegetables," she says.

"Nobody likes vegetables."

"Celery," she says, and offers him the bag again. "I liked celery even when I was young."

His eyes gleam, turning to her. "You were one fucked-up kid."

She looks back at him, meditates on the mines hidden under the words, and decides to say nothing.

"'Roly-poly,'" he says, and the way he says the name is a chuckle, a tremor of amusement under a black velvet cover. He takes another stick of celery. "Learn something new."

She shifts in her seat and considers taking issue, but it is more interesting to her how much less jarring that old, hated pet name is than hearing 'Carolyn' in that voice. Her last name on her partner's tongue -- Logan, she experiments, and notes no discrepancy between the word and the man beside her -- is like a familiar suit, while her first name chafes.

He says 'Carolyn' as though it belongs to a woman; 'Barek' as though it belongs to a cop. She thinks about that, and wonders, not for the first time, about her partner and his women.

"You never got teased about your name when you a kid?" she asks.

He shrugs; his expression shifts to swift, black humor. "I had other problems," he says, and does not elaborate.

"I used to hate my name," she observes. "Most kids do, at some point or another." She could mention that he is starting to make her hate it again, but does not. Because she is a professional. That he would enjoy it too much only factors a little into the equation.

He shrugs, the leather of his coat creaking against the back of the seat. "Never had a problem with mine." His gaze shifts to their target's house, worrying at shadows through the dilated black of night sight. "Good, sound, Irish Catholic name."

"Mm," she says. She peels her fingers away from her coffee cup, and peels the plastic top away to search for signs of steam. "It's a fantasy. Pretending to be somebody else, with a different life, different friends, different family -- children understand the power of symbols. I spent an entire summer pretending my name was Cordelia Avonlea, and introduced myself that way to everyone I met."

There is no recognition in Mike's face, even if the raised eyebrows are eloquent. He is not an Anne of Green Gables reader. This somehow fails to surprise her. "Dated a Cordelia once," he says, and passes the thermos to her. It is lighter than it was. "Dated a Carolyn, too," he adds by way of an afterthought, and again there is that brief, internal unease at the sound of her first name in his voice.

"Cordelia Avonlea was French," she tells him, translating the imagination of an introverted, imaginative 8-year old girl. "She was blonde, lived in Rome, and had two parrots and an iguana."

Silence falls while Mike considers this, deciding what to mock first. "An iguana," he finally says, and surprises her with simple curiosity.

"I liked reptiles."

"Rome, huh?"

"Hepburn," she reminds. Nostalgia perches on her shoulder.

Mike chuffs a breath that sends the steam from his coffee twirling wildly. "I saw that movie," he admits. She does not think she is imagining the way his voice eases, suggesting pleasant associations on his part as well. He shifts. "My Cordelia was a model. --No, wait." His head lifts, as though attending to some inner prompt. "Photographer. Something to do with fashion, anyway."

She glances questioningly at him. He rewards her with a trace of that former, masculine smirk. "Swimsuit," he says, and shakes his head. Nostalgia, indeed. "She looked good in a swimsuit."

"That's quite a collection," she murmurs. "You've dated a model, a nurse--"

"Maybe a photographer," he reminds.

"--a teacher--"

"Or Ashley," he says thoughtfully. "Maybe her name was Ashley."

It requires little effort to retrieve the statistics on police and self-destructive behavior; even less to patchwork the profile of behavior represented by the man beside her. She bastes on tidbits of new information, then lets the fabric of it slip out of her fingers for later study.

"How'd you know about the teacher?" he asks.

She flips through mnemonics: teacher, student, recess, the school bell beckoning-- "Becky," she plucks out. "You mentioned her once." Most of his women begin and end in the past tense, barely registering. The transient Becky's existence is quantifiable only in two sentences spoken in passing one day: _Shit, I forgot to call Becky_, and _She's a teacher_.

"What, you keeping track of my love life, now?"

She shrugs. "What else have you dated?"

His gaze glitters, turning towards her. "Dancers," he says. "Singers, models, clerks, beauticians, students, paralegals--"

"Lawyers?" she suggests. "Cops?"

He stretches himself in the driver's side, joints crackling under the muffle of his coat. "Lawyers, once or twice, when they were slumming. Cops-- not for years." He glances at her. "I had this partner, back in the day." His mouth hooks into a smile; his face warms with sudden, heart-squeezing charm. "He had this saying. 'Never put your pecker before your paycheck.'"

"This wouldn't be the same partner who was an amazing stick man, would it?"

"Lennie." The deep, rich voice burrs with old affection. "Lennie Briscoe."

His file is a thick, ugly thing. Her memory recovers it for her, weighing down Deakins' desk with its scars while the Captain's voice summarizes a tumultuous history. "From the two-seven," she says.

"You met?" There is no real surprise in the question. Varied and numerous though the ranks of the NYPD are, it is a close community.

"I've only heard of him," she says, which is true enough. "By reputation." Which is also true.

"You would've liked him."

She does not question the judgment. Her partner speaks for dead men.

A light winks on in the house, too small and wan to be anything more than a spark. Mike stiffens beside her, anticipation sharpening tension in the car. "Flashlight," he says, unnecessarily. It bobs and weaves through the curtains, then disappears. A few moments later, it presses dimly against the curtains on the first floor.

"He's heading for the garage," she suggests, while Mike thrusts his cup into her hands and turns the key in the ignition. The car grumbles awake, cold air spilling from the vents.

"Damn this heater," he says, and there's new life in the growl of his voice. "You got the phone?"

She is already dialing, waiting for the voice on the other side. Light squirms through the panels of the garage door, scraping itself on sharp edges of wood. It is Alex who answers, dry and sardonic as the man at the steering wheel. "Eames," the other woman greets. And adds, "If you're calling to trade partners, I'll throw in a danish. It's only half-eaten."

The garage door opens, apologetically stealthy. A boat of a car slides out: its headlights off, its motor a low rumble. "He's moving," Carolyn says, and finds herself smiling a little at her own stab of anticipation.

"Got it," Alex says. "See you in a few." The line cuts off.

Mike eases the car into the road. "Got anymore vegetables there, Roly-poly?"

"Carolyn," she says, and offers him the bag.

He grins into the dark. "Barek," he says, and eats celery.


End file.
